Notorious 1942 Hollywood movie that depicts Japanese American leaders in Los Angeles as being part of a Japanese spy ring and that actively advocates the expulsion and incarceration of Japanese Americans using actual documentary footage.

A B-movie made quickly and cheaply (a $300,000 budget) by Twentieth-Century Fox and producer Jason Joy with the intention of exploiting the mass incarceration of West Coast Japanese Americans,
Little Tokyo, U.S.A.
was filmed in Los Angeles from May 11 to early June 1942. Ironically, director Otto Brower ended up shooting outdoor scenes in Chinatown, since the real
Little Tokyo
was largely vacant by the time of the filming. Publicity material for the film claimed that it was factual, and the studio and stars framed their participation in the movie as contributing to the war effort. Harold Huber, who played the lead Japanese American character, claimed that the movie performed a "civil service" since it worked "to show their [Japanese Americans'] activities against our country."
[1]
After the completion of the filming, the studio quickly scored and edited the movie so as "to get the picture before the public before the evacuation of Japanese fades from the front pages."
[2]
It was released on August 14, 1942.

After a prologue attesting to "Japanese mass espionage... in the United States" by Japanese Americans, the film begins by introducing Ito Takimura (Harold Huber), a Little Tokyo based Nisei businessman, who is also the head of a Japanese/German spy ring in Los Angeles. As the group gathers information on defense installations in California, police detective Michael Steele (Preston Foster) becomes suspicious and quizzes his old friend, Oshima, for information. Steele's efforts are derided by colleagues and by his girlfriend, news reporter Maris Hanover (Brenda Joyce). When Oshima turns up dead, Steele redoubles his efforts, but is seemingly outsmarted when the ring first manages to get him transferred to a different beat, then set him up with Teru, a beautiful Nisei woman (June Duprez), whom they then kill, framing Steele for her murder. He languishes in jail as the group celebrates the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Steele subsequently escapes and tricks the ring into revealing their plot to the police, resulting in their apprehension. The breaking up of the ring leads directly to scenes of newspaper headlines extolling the forced removal of Japanese Americans ("Last Japs Leave L.A. Area Today!"; "Santa Anita Race Track Is Evacuation Station for Japs") intercut with actual footage of Japanese Americans being rounded up and the now deserted Little Tokyo. The film ends with the now chastened Maris reporting approvingly on the expulsion of Japanese Americans, then turning to face camera and exhorting viewers to "Be vigilant, America!"

Most of the Japanese American characters in the film were played by white actors in heavy make up. Star Huber's make up reportedly took two hours to apply. Other Japanese American characters were played by Chinese American actors including Richard Loo, a Hawai'i native who played "Japanese" roles in a number of other movies.

According to an American Film Institute study, reviewers "dismissed the film as a routine spy melodrama." The
New York Times
review stated that "the film as a whole is so larded with hackneyed plot devices and stock Nipponese characters that it smacks more of the conventional spy story than anything else" The
Hollywood Reporter
praised the acting of "occidentals who play amazingly realistic Orientals."
[3]

Reviewers for the
Office of War Information
(OWI) found the movie highly problematic. Newly formed in June 1942 to consolidate government propaganda efforts, one of the OWI's charges was to monitor Hollywood films and to encourage story lines that would aid the war effort. OWI reviewers objected to broad depiction of the Japanese American community in
Little Tokyo, U.S.A.
as "a single, united body which works together at all times for itself and against America," to the disregard for civil rights demonstrated by the Steele ("Did somebody mention that we are presumably fighting for the preservation of the Bill of Rights?" one reviewer asked), and to the wanton violence and numerous racial slurs. With an eye to the post incarceration fate of Japanese Americans, the OWI and the
War Relocation Authority
(WRA) worried that the film "can open the floodgates of prejudice... and can render the post-war re-absorption of Japanese-Americans an almost insuperable problem." OWI officials met with producer Joy to request changes. However, since the film had already been completed—meaning any changes would be costly—and since the OWI had no actual power to censor films, Joy largely ignored the requests. This early experience led the OWI to change their tactics with future movies, and the agency subsequently sought to review scripts before movies were made and used the threat of withholding international distribution (which would severely cut into studios' bottom line) to shape movies more to their liking.
[4]

As the only Hollywood movie to actively support the mass incarceration,
Little Tokyo, U.S.A.
remained notorious long after its initial run. It was among movies that the
Japanese American Citizens League
(JACL) and other organizations sought to keep from being shown on television and community protests greeting other attempts to screen it.
[5]
As such, it became very difficult to see the movie for many years. With the film's continued notoriety and uniqueness, it has been screened more frequently in recent decades in film and ethnic studies classes.

↑
See, for instance,
Pacific Citizen
, May 10, 1952, pp. 1, 4, accessed on Jan. 12, 2018 at
http://ddr.densho.org/ddr-pc-24-19/
. Wang Xiaofei describes a successful protest that prevented the movie from being shown at the International Museum of Photography in 1980, and the JACL protested a planned screening as part of a film series in Rochester, New York. "Constructing Japaneseness," 176;
Pacific Citizen
, Sept. 26, 1980, 1.

This article also appears in the Densho Encyclopedia, a free on-line resource covering the key concepts, people, events, and organizations that played a role in the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.

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This article also appears in the Densho Encyclopedia, a free on-line resource covering the key concepts, people, events, and organizations that played a role in the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.

This material is based upon work assisted by a grant from the U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Department of the Interior.

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The Resource Guide to Media on the Japanese American Removal and Incarceration is a free project of Densho. Our mission is to preserve the testimonies of Japanese Americans who were unjustly incarcerated during World War II before their memories are extinguished. We offer these irreplaceable firsthand accounts, coupled with historical images and teacher resources, to explore principles of democracy, and promote equal justice for all.